Hypoallergenic green spaces

Plants in cities contribute to airborne allergies during pollen season. So how do we select plants to provide ecological and environmental services in cities while preventing allergic reactions?

Paloma Carinanos, professor of Botany, University of Granada, Spain, studies how the plants in urban green spaces affect air quality. She and her team then look at how the air quality affects human health. Her work shows that by carefully selecting trees for green spaces, cities can take advantage of the benefits of urban forests.

When Paloma and her team set out to quantity and document the trees of Granada’s urban spaces, they found that the most popular trees also caused allergenic air quality problems. Trees were selected for landscaping, climate and fashion criteria, but not health impact on residents.

Variety is critical, she says. Increasing the variety of trees in green spaces can both decrease allergies and increase the urban vegetation’s ability to clean pollutants out of the air.